In Mom's House: A Memoir

By Elain L Edge

Life was filled with long days of hard work in the 1930s and 1940s, however families thrived by working together and creating their own entertainment without the benefit of electronics. The author's family raised their own food, had only one car for a family of eight people, and had limited social activities. Yet, their style of life prepared them for a broader world by giving them the values of mutual love, compassion for others, and the ability to be self sufficient. The stories featured in this book are based on first person experiences while growing up during the depression on a farm in Iowa. The author's perceptions of the stories may differ somewhat from those of her siblings', who then are invited to share their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475937411

Elain L Edge

Elain Edge was educated at Waldorf College, Forest City, IA, Iowa State University, Ames, IA and Drake University, Des Moines, IA. She credits the values learned in her Mom's house and her late husband's generous support to her taking the risks necessary to learn from and work with a variety of people in a variety of settings. She has three adult children and five grandchildren. She is retired and lives in Rogers, MN.

Book preview

IN MOM’S HOUSE

A MEMOIR

ELAIN L EDGE

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

In Mom’s House

A Memoir

Copyright © 2012 by Elain L Edge.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-3740-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3741-1 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/24/2012

Contents

OVERVIEW

RELIGOUS TRAINING

EXTENDED FAMILY

HARDSHIPS

EDUCATION 101

JOINING A LARGER SOCIETY

THE BIG GIRLS GROW UP

OUR PART IN THE WAR

EDUCATION 102

MOVING ON

EDUCATION 201

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Iowa gets really hot and steamy in August. In the years when farmers were struggling to make a living as the country was just coming out of the big depression, and before the advent of huge farm machinery, they worked together as neighborhoods while harvesting, etc. So, on the 22 nd day of August in 1932, the neighbors gathered at our farm to thresh the oats from the straw. The task of feeding the 10-12 hungry, hard working men fell to the farm wives. Not only was the noon meal which included meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread, butter and dessert expected, but an afternoon lunch of sandwiches, cookies and lemonade or homemade root beer was to be prepared and carried to the fields each day. The main dishes for the noon meal were cooked on the kitchen cook stove, a large, heavy piece of equipment, which had an iron top with four round removable grates separating the wood and cob fire from the cooking surface. The bread would have been baked that morning in the hot oven which was the lower part of the large stove. In August, the kitchen heat was sometimes almost unbearable. Yet, I’m sure that my mother embraced the task of the food preparation without complaining, because she believed one was to just do what one had to do and whining about it wouldn’t make it easier. She may have had a hired girl for that day, and I feel confident that Muriel, my ten year old sister would have been helping in the kitchen as well. Eight year old LaVon was most likely occupied entertaining six year old Ellwood and four year old Arleen, although there would have been tasks for them as well, according to each of his or her capabilities. They no doubt had pumped drinking water from the well and carried it into the house. Some of the food would have had to have been kept cool, so they would have carried the sealed jars full of fruit or coleslaw to the cooling tank which was connected to the watering tank for the cattle and horses by a steel pipe. Surely, the younger children had collected the cobs from the cob house or wood from the wood pile for the stove. Work in mom’s house was a family affair, and no one expected anything different.

Some hours later, Dad would have left to pick up the midwife, because I was born into that family the next morning at 6:00 A.M. It is doubtful that I was a planned baby, however, I could have been since two years before almost to the day, a baby son had been born and died two weeks later. Years later, I heard an old fashioned farm wife explain that she was elated when her daughter had